artistic Music: Why Wait - ShakiraAll my life (if one could call it that), it always felt like I was living someone else’s life. Those out of body experiences people say they live through when they die and come back? I’ve felt like that my entire waking life. I have always wanted to belong to somebody, something, and anything much greater than or equal to myself. But I never have. Not that I haven’t tried.
I tried to fit in at school, get along with everybody, but I never had more than one or two close friends at any one point. I like to think that I had a great imagination but no outlet to express myself. I have fond memories of taking swimming and ballet lessons during the summer when I was a kid, because I thought it’d be fun. I was teased mercilessly because I was smart and quicker to answer the teacher before anyone else did, so I became a “schoolgirl.” Verbal abuse leaves scars as deep as physical bullying does. I went through my confirmation classes to become a “soldier of Christ,” but in the end, not even His words bring me comfort anymore.
I went into band because I loved music so much that I figured I might as well learn how to perform it. The specter of my musician father and my “went through band” older siblings probably moved me to get into it too. I gave it up when I entered high school. I took up piano because my mom made me and my little brother take lessons. We gave that up halfway through high school. I went into high school drama thinking I would find a chance to express myself. Gave that up when I went to college. I went to college thinking I would find a purpose to my life because I hadn’t quite found it yet. I am the proud recipient of a bachelor’s degree in English nine years after I graduated high school, and I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.
I meandered through life, hoping if I didn’t make any noise and limited to no eye contact, everyone would leave me alone. Maybe my parents saw early on that I wasn’t going to be like my siblings, so they let me be. Besides, that’s not my style. I never acted out, I never rebelled. I got decent grades but I wasn’t a standout student.
Nothing in my life has ever lit a fire under me, to chance a cliché. I have an off and on love affair with movies. But that would be another few years in school that I don’t have the fervor to pursue at the moment. The only thing for which my passion has never faded is for music, not performing but consuming it. It’s no secret to anyone who takes a cursory glance of my life knows that music is all I have. All I’ll ever have. But, like most hobbies, music costs money.
I always thought I was going to be a writer someday. The only legalized outlet for my innate resistance to the machinations of existence has always been the written word. But internalized rejection prevents me from pursuing it professionally. At least, right now. I don’t trust myself enough to make a living off of it. And if I did make a living, it would be a meager way of life at best.
I got my degree in English, thinking it would help me focus on being a better writer by studying the greats. In the end, it did a fantastic job of reminding me that as a student, it was another failure to add to my very long list. Love love love to learn, I absolutely hate the work that is expected of you. I didn’t want to be a teacher because if I can’t smack a kid for sassing me, there’s no point in trying to help them. I don’t want to be a reporter because I hate deadlines. I also hate people taking my words and changing them so much so that it doesn’t sound like me in the end. My written voice is all I have. If they take that away from me, I won’t have anything left in the end.
If you want to be a writer, you have three options: write and die knowing no publishing house has your repertoire; hope you write some diamond in the rough and face countless dismissals just trying to get it into the right hands and die; or do niche writing to pay the bills and die either way. I don’t think I have enough motivation in me to warrant making a career out of writing to pay the bills. Then again I don’t want writing to be a soul-sucking career like every chop shop writer before me has done of this special passion of mine. I am most likely going to end up like option one: writing until I am dead, and hope someone publishes me posthumously.
Maybe my education was counter-productive. Education opened my eyes and taught me to see the world for what it is, and not what Walt Disney taught me. That is, if I even learned anything from watching the movies his company has brought into this crazy world. All I can see is the pain and heartbreak. On the flip side, I also see people who can survive on one dream and that dream alone until the end of their days. The simplistic counter-argument to pain and heartbreak is that if we don’t experience the bad with the good, life is not worth living.
So what happens when all you experience is flat? Not good, not bad, not provocative, not horrendous, just flat.
I am turning 27 this year and I am beginning to question where the hell my life went. People all around me are coupling up, continuing with their education, having babies, getting engaged, getting married, partying until dawn’s early light, and drinking until they pass out. I guess that’s what you’re supposed to when you are my age. I’ve tried to be “that girl” so much. I gain no pleasure from that life. I can’t even begin to explain it. I am doing just enough to survive, but not really live. But when I do “live,” it makes me gloomy and ache for the times when I wasn’t trying to fit in.
I know that – as an adult – you are expected to do certain things. I got a job because that’s what you’re supposed to do. I get up five days a week and go to my job because I have bills that need to be paid off. Money is the root of all evil but damned if I don’t need to do the things that bring me temporary highs. I try and stay connected to my friends and family, but I need them more than they will ever need me. That realization burns like hellfire but that’s a part of growing up. In the end, you keep going.
I also know that I don’t need a man to validate me, and I know that being a mother will not complete me. Finding yourself is something you need to work on alone, and I have been doing that for 27 years. But if I could ask God, or Santa, a genie, or any number of magical creatures and deus ex machina that grants wishes, I would ask for one thing. I would ask for someone who is perfect for me. He doesn’t necessarily need to be perfect but he’ll be the one who gets me and helps me to get me. I don’t think I’m asking for too much. I do everything else you’re supposed to as an adult. Where is he?
In the end, my identity crises come and go. Some days I am supremely confident in who I am. I can walk the walk and do what I need to do. Other days, I am insecure and on the defense, claws out and primed for anyone who messes with my world. I also have bursts of lucidity where I feel like the yellow brick road is laid out in front of me. All I need to do is put one foot in front of the other to get to the Wizard at the end. Other days, as soon as I open my eyes to a brand new day, I want to curl up and die. The balance in life fades in and out like an old black and white television for me. In the end, I don’t think I know who I am even after all these years. I’ve tried, God, I have tried to understand. I’ve struggled to come to grips with my social and cultural awkwardness.
Maybe that, in the end, is my legacy. There is confusion from my toes to the top of my head and all around me. We’re not meant to know the secret to life. As a person, I don’t even know the secret to me. That is what angers me the most, that, in the end, I will die not ever knowing the limitations of my sadness.
The less that can be said about me, the better.
